Death Magazine - Matthew Haigh BLOG TOUR

‘Death Magazine is a neutropian vision of our soundbite, snippet-obsessed, digital and print magazine culture. It employs the Dadaist technique of cut-up to produce poems that range from the blackly comic to the surreal, from the nonsensical to the prescient.’

Thus sayeth the blurb pertaining to Matthew Haigh’s poetry collection. Structured as a, predominately male, lifestyle magazine with various sections that are commonly found in such publications, Haigh examines the human condition with a black humour that borders on both the sarcastic and surreal at times yet is a pertinent indictment of our digital days, culturally.

Using the cut up technique Haigh manages to construct a powerful suite of verse. Resplendent with intense and sustained imagery the collection demands you stop, think and consider. There is humour, there is compassion, there is the soul of a poet intertwined within the words. 

As is my preferred method I always read each poem aloud before I read silently, to allow the full weight of the words to engulf me. Invariably the subjectivity of poetry means each reader will have their favourites. I have mine and I also have favourite lines from throughout the collection, like these:-

‘I am a downloaded copy of my entire life.’

‘I don’t remember now what I don’t remember’

‘Even though yellow is going to happen, corroded metal is unapologetically feminine.’

‘How to frame life without eating. 

How to frame life without wanting.’

'The quiet lanes shagged with the foliage.....'

The reading of various poems invoked certain trigger memories. For example ‘Treating Depression with H.R. Giger reminded me of Ewan McGregor’s Choose Life monologue from Trainspotting. I read it with the same accent and inflection!

‘Try treating depression with lavender. Try treating depression with bath bombs or a peach stone in your mouth. Try cannabis, try walking, try kundalini yoga. Try saying yourself each morning I am not afraid. 

I treat depression by running the blades of scissors down my ring finger.’

I found this poem also provoked an insatiable curiosity within me. I watched a YouTube video about camel spiders as I’d never heard of these ‘Spawn of Satan. I found the Giger painting curious as Alien had been referred to in the previous poem so I googled it.  I find the words create a mood within me, an effect, like watercolour but with words. Powerful.

'Passionflower Your Sleep Routine' initially reminded me of that game we used to play as kids called ‘bangers and mash’. Where you substituted the word bangers and mash for various nouns within the passage that you were reading. When we grew older we substituted rude words and fell about in hilarious laughter. Guess that might have been my very early introduction to the cutup technique! This poem also invoked Dylan Thomas with the line ‘I go thunderous to bed.’ It just reminded me of ‘Do Not Go Gentle......’.

'What Will Your Sims Do Now?' I found a poignant but immersive consideration of our relationship with video games. The sense of our misconstrued ability to control when it is we who are being manipulated.

Other favourite poems include 'Memento' and 'Reptile Your Relationship'. I DID shrug.

The Fitness section I found hilarious where Haigh takes a series of male screen  icons like Brando and de Niro offering the reader insights into their fitness regimes! But it's discerning as Haigh has subtly identified their perceived characteristics quite accurately. 

'Hardy is so hardy, and hard to kill. He does a convincing impression of bacteria.'

'Gyllenhaal had six months to resemble a suit of armour - he did this by performing 2000 cultural expectations a day.'

As is so often the case when trying to review a collection of poetry you want to quote and comment on every single poem in the collection. Thus I could continue by citing every single piece but I'll conclude by commending the 'Interview with a New Father' which is so surreal and incredibly topical at the moment as apparently it is taken from an interview with Joe Wicks. 😉

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon for the opportunity to not only read this incredible volume of work but to participate in the blog tour. Do check out what my blogging colleagues have to say.